The ESXi Embedded Host Client is a native HTML and JavaScript application and is served directly from your ESXi host! It should perform much better than any of the existing solutions.

Please note that the Host Client cannot be used to manage vCenter.

We welcome any feedback and bug reports at this early stage. However, rather than reporting on missing features, we are very much interested in your thoughts on the layout, user experience, and performance of the host client. here: Download the VIB here.

8) 8) 8) Known Issues

ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or lower hosts which are assigned a VMware vSphere Hypervisor license, all modification operations will fail silently. This issue has been resolved in ESXi 6.0 U2 and 5.5 Patch 8. ESXi 6.0 host before Update 2 which have a sub-domain name with large, shared cookies a web console session may fail to initialize. A workaround is to clear cookies or run the host client in an incognito-type window, or use VMware Remote Console. For ESXi 5.5 hosts, in-browser consoles are not supported. Please use VMRC to access guest VM consoles. For ESXi 5.5 hosts before Update 2, you must ensure to append a trailing / (forward slash) to the URL after /ui. The URL must be https://<esxhost>/ui/ For some Windows guests, sending Ctrl-Alt-Del does not work.

What's missing?

The Embedded Host Client is currently undergoing development. We are working hard to bring the functionality level to that of the vSphere Client, but we're not there yet. Here's what we know is missing:

The easiest way to install a VIB is to download it directly on the ESXi host. Alternatively, you can download it to your local machine and use scp to push it to your ESXi Host.All installation techniques require you to enable SSH on your ESXi host, using DCUI or the vSphere web client.

If your ESXi host has internet access, you can install directly from URL.

ssh root@<esx ip or hostname> esxcli software vib install -v <URL>

where <URL> is the URL to the VIB from the VMware.com Flings website or somewhere you have locally hosted it.

If the VIB installation completes successfully, you should now be able to navigate a web browser to https://<esx ip or hostname>/ui and the login page should be displayed.

If you have downloaded the VIB to your local machine, you will need to push it to ESXi using scp.